"Pink Triangle and Yellow Star" (1981) Summary and Analysis

Vidal ostensibly wants to review Tricks, one of several books that deals with homosexuality, but spends most of his ink in this essay on a wide-ranging commentary on "certain curious facts of our social and cultural life." One of these facts is that "military societies on the rise tend to encourage same-sex activities." Another is that "American evangelical Christians are busy trying to impose on the population at large their superstitions about sex and the sexes and the creation of the world." Another fact is that "Jews, blacks and homosexualists are despised by the Christian and Communist majorities of East and West."

In the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, Jews wore yellow stars and "homosexualists" pink triangles, and "like it or not, Jews and homosexualists are in the same...